Stormy Tuesday

It has been a strange bit of weather in Indiana of late. Tornadoes in Evansville the first weekend in November and especially strong thunderstorms across the state this evening. We heard reports of tornadoes on the news this evening. All that means we spent some time in the basement watching the weather while we ate dinner and played a set of Mystery Rummy: Jekyll and Hyde this evening.

Tristan was excited on Monday. He started piano lessons and had been impatiently waiting for us to set up a schedule with Chad to begin his lessons ever since we purchased the digital piano less than a month ago. Our neighbor’s daughter taught Tristan a couple of tunes to play until lessons started and Chad was duly impressed with Tristan’s ability to play with both hands having had no instruction yet. For Tristan, I hope the wonder and excitement continues and that he enjoys playing music as much 10 years from now as he does today.

Caleb and I played our first game of Battle Cry Monday night. The scenario was First Bull Run. I played the Confederates and Caleb played the Union. Caleb became stuck in the latter half of the game with no usable cards and spent a turn or two discarding and drawing a new card. I established my troops along the Henry House Hill in the middle of the board. With the added advantage from the hill, I was able to hold off his infantry and win the battle. The final score was 6 to 3, Confederates. Although Battle Cry and Memoir ‘44 use the same system, they play considerably different. Infantry can only move 1 hex in Battle Cry but have a range of 4 instead of 3. Artillery range in Battle Cry is reduced by 1 (5 instead of 6) but are more devastating at close range (5 dice vs 3 in Memoir ‘44). Cavalry are the closest thing to Armor in Battle Cry. They can move 3 — the same as armor — but can only battle with an adjacent unit whereas Armor have a range of 3 in Memoir ‘44. With Infantry making up the bulk of the units in our Battle Cry scenario, the advancement of units across the board was slower. And that’s ok because that style mimics the style of warfare of that era better than if the units had movement and range similar to the units in Memoir ‘44. We will play a lot of Battle Cry in addition to Memoir ‘44.